Echoes
by IridescentFlight
Summary: Empty shells doomed to echoes and blank white walls, that was what they were, and they were nothing. They choke on the deception behind their laughter and try in vain to feel a heartbeat. Larxene-centric, slight Larxel. oneshot


**Author's Gutter:** Well. Here I am again. I thought I'd take a different twist on a probably overplayed plot. Don't care. I thought of it myself, probably because it's so obvious, and I'm not ripping off of anyone else. Great minds think alike. Haha. Anyway, I really just based it off on my idea that the Nobody's aren't _quite_ sane. But mad in a more lucid way than real craziness. Plus, since Larxene's a sadist, I thought she'd relate to trying to use pain as a receptor for emotions. Really not all there, as the Chesire Cat said. And Axel? I figure him to be less of a sociopath than Larxene, but I don't imagine anyone in the Organization to be good or nice … except for Demyx. Demyx is a cupcake with a crazy mullet.

**Warning: **I stand by the aforementioned theory that the Nobodys are not nice, no matter how spazzy they may get. So, this is a rather dark one-shot. It involves cutting, but not the depressive "life-hates-me" cutting. It's just Larxene being … well, what I imagine to be Larxene. Sadistic, even masochistic.

It's Axel/Larxene, if you tilt your head and squint. Really only because I like Larxene, so whatever I write will support the idea of them together. I think I originally planned it to have some actual not-romance type … romance … but that didn't actually work out.

**Disclaimer: ** If I owned Kingdom Hearts, and if it was anything like what I write, it'd probably get bumped up to a T level. Give me a call if you ever see that happen, 'cause it _might_ mean that Squeenix is stalking me and stealing my shit.

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If you wanted to be alone, Castle Oblivion was a good place for it.

The Organization's headquarters screamed anonymity with every blank wall, every empty hall and corridor where your footsteps echoed into the ivory nothingness, rippling away, away, away. It was easy to lose yourself here, and Larxene was realizing that getting lost was an addicting habit.

For instance, here she was on a level whose number she could not remember, in a hall that looked like all the other halls, perched upon one of the stone statues that flanked either side of a dais. Leaning back as far as her precarious position would allow, long legs crossed and heels digging into the pedestal, she threw her head back and laughed into the nothingness, and her voice swarmed against the blank walls, echoing _awayawayawayaway_. She wondered what the emotion behind laughter felt like, wondered how a laugh would feel without the bitter taste of deception lingering on the back of her tongue. She wondered and made herself laugh at her wondering, willed her lips to open and her throat to work out her voice in a mocking imitation of joy, and then closed her eyes to feel those cold, lucid crocodile tears to slip from her lashes. The damp trail of saltwater over her cheeks was more real of a sensation than the laugher trapped in her throat.

She was lost, lost in a bare white room with bare white walls and bare white floors with only a cold cold shell of a person trying to paint the room with the color of her laughter. But the falsity of it was pale and thin, and no empty sound could give any part of Castle Oblivion life.

But oh, how beautiful it was to lose yourself.

Larxene lifted her gloved hands to her wet cheeks, fingers brushing over those false tears, whose only purpose lay in their ability to make her feel through her skin. Was that the way a heart felt, too? Did sadness have the same feeling as this cool wetness? She lowered her hand and turned her fingers this way and that, watching the liquid on them glisten before soaking into the black fabric. Did sorrow sink into a heart the same way? She wondered if the tears were still there, and pulled off her glove.

Her pale hand was dry. She flexed her fingers and looked down at her arm with a slight smile. Odd how little she saw her bare skin, usually made unknown by Organization blacks. But seeing it made her feel more real, as if she actually might be here, existing.

Without even thinking it through, Larxene pulled out a single kunai, and laid the sharp edge against the skin of her underarm, just above the crook of her elbow. A slight prick that left droplets of blood swelling on her skin before slipping down just like tears. And then the cut closed up, blank and flawless as the bare white walls that surrounded her.

She traced lines in her arm, again and again, watching as the regenerative powers of a Nobody healed the minor wounds, erasing the color and pain that was her only proof of existence. Red, alive, white, nothing. _Nothingnothingnothingnothing_, and the word echoed hollowly in her mind.

The Savage Nymph made her lips part, her vocal cords hum, her voice lift, and she laughed, and choked on the deception that was too thick to swallow.

"Is this what it feels like?" she mused, and carved a jagged heart into her arm. It lay there for a moment, uneven lines of crimson reality standing out in stark contrast to her bare white skin. And then it was gone again.

She repeated the process, as certain as an echo, again and again.

"What are you doing?"

Brought out of her almost trance-like fascination, Larxene turned around in her spot to see Axel standing behind her, his fire-red hair as much as a screaming contrast to the white backdrop as her blood was to her skin.

She grinned at him and held up her arm, showing him the heart-shaped cut before it healed itself over once more.

"Giving myself a heart, of course," she replied with a child's giggle, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and she turned the corners of her full lips up in what she knew would be a smile.

Axel responded with a smirk of his own, though his eyes were as dead as they were deadly. Windows to a soul that wasn't there; windows looking in on only an empty room.

"And is it working?" he asked, looking up at her, and she noticed that his voice did not echo back to him.

She tilted her head coyly to one side.

"Why don't you try it out for yourself?"

Quick as lightening, she head slipped down from the statue and leaped over to him, kunai held like claws. She flew to him, past him, a blur that was like an echo to the eyes, and landed light as a feather behind him, and it was only then that he felt the sting on his cheek.

Axel looked up at her first, at her teeth that were bared in a savage mockery of a grin, her features seeming to tip on the balance of laughing and crying at any moment.

Then he raised his hand to his cheek and felt the warm wetness there, pulled them away to see the blood on his fingertips, and knew that she had slashed a heart into his skin.

How strange it was, that his blood should be so warm and **there** when he was supposed to be nothing (_nothingnothingnothingnothing_).

He lifted up his fingers again, but the cut was already healed, and there was nothing left.

"How beautiful a heart looks on you, Axel," Larxene said mockingly. She raised her kunai-clawed hands and looked at him from behind those blades with a challenge in her eyes.

"Now it's your turn to make me feel something."

And Axel summoned his chakrams in a burst of flames, grinning and tasting deception as they both lunged.

The clash of metal against metal was so wonderfully real.

Larxene thrust, met with the shield of his weapons and ducked as he retaliated. She twisted to the side and kicked him back, bringing her naked arm up and summoning a bolt of crackling lightening, whips of bright electricity dancing around her.

Axel dodged out of the way, and, remembering her challenge, slashed his chakrams through the air and threw blasts of fire her way. Untouched by the heat as Castle Oblivion was as untouched by life, he passed through them and found himself in front of her, whips of lightening and tongues of flame circling around them as if to pull them together. The fire burned Larxene's white skin red, and she found herself pushing a laugh past her lips at that as her electricity obviously pained Axel.

They were caught in a whirlwind of blades and desperation, each wishing to catch hold of that elusive something that lingered just beyond their reach, a reality that promised to turn the bitter taste of deception in the back of their throats to something worth feeling.

Then Axel pushed Larxene up against the white white wall, a chakram held to her white white throat as he pulled off his glove and burned a heart into the blank and flawless skin of her cheek.

"Looks like I'm not lost after all," she said in a low voice that was colored by the pain of her burn and the awfulness of her smile.

He heard her kunai clatter to the floor, and the sound echoed in the empty hall with her sudden laugh, and for a moment, he though he could feel.

"Proof of existence."

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**Author's Gutter:** Finally, I got that off my mind! Remember, it only takes a couple seconds to review, so I'd appreciate that. Either way, I hope you enjoyed it. 3

As to the whole regeneration thing, don't give me any annoying arguments against that. I know it took you just as long to kill the Nobodys as it did me, because Nobodys just don't _die_ like normal people. I figure they heal themselves to a certain extent, and to kill them for good you just basically have to kill them over and over again enough times … like homunculi. Freakin' cockroaches, but we love them.


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